BOONE—A new book on the Civil War as it played out in the mountains of North Carolina will be released by Appalachian State University on Sunday, Nov. 18, at the Riverview Community Center in Creston.

“Neighbor to Neighbor: A Memoir of Family, Community and Civil War in Appalachian North Carolina” features the Civil War memoir of Ashe County native William A. Wilson (1861-1951). A missionary to Japan for most of his life, Wilson was the youngest son of eight children born to Caroline and Isaac Wilson, a lieutenant in the Confederate Army who was murdered in his own cornfield while home on furlough.

The book explores local history and honors the ancestors of many local residents.

It is co-edited by Sandra L. Ballard, editor of the “Appalachian Journal,” and Leila E. Weinstein, a graduate student in Appalachian Studies. Historic maps, family photographs, a family tree, and other historical documents illustrate the Wilson memoir.

“Neighbor to Neighbor” will be available for the first time Nov. 18 at Riverview Community Center in Creston in Ashe County, where there will be a potluck dinner beginning at 1 p.m. A talk with the editors and Patricia Beaver, director of the Center for Appalachian Studies, and a booksigning will begin at 1:30 p.m. The public is invited.

This fascinating book includes genealogical information, an extensive index, and three essays by scholars who place the memoir in historical context. Beaver, who is also an anthropologist, provides an ethnographic look at the Ashe County location where events took place and tracks recent changes to communities located in the headwaters of the New River’s North Fork.

Civil War historian John Inscoe of the University of Georgia examines the complex role of memory in the writing of family recollections. Martin Crawford, historian in the School of American Studies at the University of Keele in England and author of “Ashe County’s Civil War,” offers historical perspectives for understanding the memoir with his research into census records, letters and other primary documents.

Amy Murrell Taylor, author of “The Divided Family in Civil War America,” says that this book “offers a vivid portrayal of life in Civil War Appalachia as well as a powerful contrast to the more numerous accounts of battlefield heroics and plantation life during the war years. For this reason alone, it should become priority reading for anyone with an interest in the Civil War.”

For more information or directions to Riverview Community Center, call the Center for Appalachian Studies at (828) 262-4089 or the Riverview Community Center at (336) 385-9812.

“Neighbor to Neighbor” also will be available at the University Bookstore on campus.